[CSGdesign]

Originally Posted by I'm goin' down

First, welcome aboard captain.

Spanks.

Originally Posted by I'm goin' down

Dick O'Kane in its classic sence refers to a broadside attack ...

K I gathered that. I thought from what I read from the link provided by commandosolo2009 (thanks!!) that it referred to the technique of lining up the three compartments, first stern then MOT [yet to learn what exactly that is - but midship somewhere i assume] and then bow... from what you're saying it's more the name giving to firing on a target from a right-angle... which is pretty much what I'm doing now anyway.

Originally Posted by I'm goin' down

The firing point (i.e. at a bearing of 350 degrees) is also referred to as the wire.

Thankyou for your explanation... however to my completely new-to-this mind you've just replaced one name "the wire" with another name "the firing point". What does a "firing point" refer to. I'm totally unfamiliar with all terminology, I've just picked up the game and started playing and teaching myself the history and terminology and techniques and such to get more immersed in role-playing the game...

Originally Posted by I'm goin' down

Also, take a look at manual targeting using the TDC. Hitman has a classic tutorial on the subject, which will teach you the theory. Also, see gutted's stand alone Solution Solver program which will compute the a lead angle for a shot at any angle to the target's course if you input the target's course and speed accurately.

I've played with manual targeting awhile ago while I was even fresher than I am now, and I got absolutely mauled by a couple of destroyers. I'm learning other techniques (like identifying targets by sound, plotting intercept courses, that kind of thing) before re-attempting that, but I'm ready to start pretty soon so I will certainly be looking into it... I've bookmarked that page commandosolo2009 linked. Is Hitman's on that? I don't recall now while I'm editing this post.

Originally Posted by I'm goin' down

As for dud torpedoes, are you playing with "dud torpedoes" enabled?

Yep, I'm playing on as accurate as possible, except I've enabled external cam (purely for the sake of creating screenshots for the journal - I don't use it to evade enemies or anything like that since I enjoy the realism of using sound stations and such) and I've disabled manual targeting cuz otherwise I get rolled by a pair of sampans. Those little buggers scare me when I'm manual!

I only had a couple of dud's off the bow of a stationery tanker once... never (thankfully) during an actual attack on like a destroyer or anything. As I said I've been using only contact influence from very short ranges (1000 to 1500 yards) and they've all worked marvelously. I used the external camera initially to gauge the depth that they went to and figured out that if you set the depth to about 5 - 6 feet above the identification manual's declared draft for any particular vessel that it would impact pretty much smack bang underneath the boat, maximising damage by blasting upwards through the hull.

I was made aware of the historical depth problem by a friend of mine (one of my global moderators) on my own forum, Shilka, who knows a bit more about the game than I do and brought me up to speed quite fast on a few topics like that, and pointed me here.

Thanks very much for your kind help, I really appreciate you taking the time... it's easily the best simulator that I've ever played... I'm loving it from day 1.